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Never risk a squirt of grapefruit juice in the eye again, thanks to Kevin Martin and Hyundo Reiner. The two created this automatic grapefruit slicer as a final project for their Designing with Microcontrollers class at Cornell University. The device is controlled with an ATmega644 microcontroller and uses a flex sensor to map the segments within the fruit so that the cutting blade cuts along the segment walls while the fruit is turned below the blade. Be sure to check out the incredibly detailed documentation for the project, complete with schematics, source code, and a thank you to their local supermarket for donating the grapefruit. [via Hacked Gadgets]

Matt Richardson is a San Francisco-based creative technologist and Contributing Editor at MAKE. He’s the co-author of Getting Started with Raspberry Pi and the author of Getting Started with BeagleBone.